


An Ocean Away, I Still Love You

by welpplew



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: But It Could Be Read That Way, Friends to Lovers, Jumping off a cliff, M/M, Tenderness, WARNING that im not sure how else to post, it's not intended to be a poorly-intentioned joke about suicide, mutual pining kind of as they are both oblivious, so please keep that in mind before reading this fic, spoilers for the end of the hq manga, there is a part in this fic where oikawa mentions something about, unrecognized feelings i guess
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-02
Updated: 2020-08-02
Packaged: 2021-03-06 06:27:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,042
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25658944
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/welpplew/pseuds/welpplew
Summary: “Do you love me, Hajime?”He asks this in a voice that makes Hajime feel two years younger, standing alone at his front door. He has to resist the urge to touch Oikawa again.His fingers twitch, answering what he can’t—won’t.When he exits the bathroom Oikawa is curled in the blankets of his bed.Hajime eats dinner alone.A month told in the span of a week, Oikawa visits Iwaizumi in California and unearths all the tender feelings Iwaizumi thought he left behind in Japan.
Relationships: Iwaizumi Hajime/Oikawa Tooru
Comments: 12
Kudos: 171





	An Ocean Away, I Still Love You

**Author's Note:**

> "The number of hours we have together is actually not so large. Please linger near the door uncomfortably instead of just leaving. Please forget your scarf in my life and come back later for it." -For M by Mikko Harvey

**Monday**

"Visit me in Argentina sometime," Oikawa had said to Hajime as he stood just outside the threshold of the Iwaizumi residence, luggage already loaded into the cab that would take him to the train station that would take him to Narita International Airport that held the plane that would fly him across the Pacific Ocean to San Juan, a city in Argentina, a country in South America. 

Hajime resisted the urge to slap his friend of more than a decade across the back of the head and instead said, "ok." 

And with that pathetic goodbye, Oikawa Tooru was in the cab and across the ocean just as the lump in Hajime's throat began to choke him. 

That was two years ago. 

Sometimes the tightness in his throat visits him in the quiet hours of the morning when all the world looks and sounds alike and Japan and America feel as though they are one in the same. 

It dissipates by his first cup of coffee.

That is until he gets a call from Oikawa— 

“Iwa-chan, I know this is last minute but I have a month off from practice, do you think I could crash at your place? Pleaseeee Iwaaaa.” His friend’s voice cracks through the speaker. 

“What about your parents? Japan?” Hajime asks, dumbfounded. 

“Ah, it's ok. I've already spoken with my parents,” the voice through the speaker trails off like a sigh only to pick back up again in performed cheerfulness. “So can I?” 

—that is until Hajime suffers California traffic a week later, following the 405 until skyscrapers smother him; until he sees Oikawa, with his messy brown hair and broad back, waiting patiently for his luggage at the LAX baggage claim. 

"You look good," Hajime says, sliding up beside his friend, eyeing the ever-turning ring of luggage, eyeing the profile of a chiseled jaw.

"Iwa-chan, you never visited me in Argentina." 

Oikawa's voice was as supple as Hajime had remembered it to be, only now there’s a warm baritone note that he hadn't noticed over the phone. 

“Ya, because unlike some of us, I’m a broke university student.” 

“What? You’re not a world-famous doctor yet?” Oikawa jokingly asks, moving closer to the metal carousel. 

Hajime reaches Oikawa’s suitcase first and hauls it to the floor. 

“Did you come here just to be annoying?” 

“Of course. And to find someone strong to carry my bags.” 

Hajime pouts in pretend vexation. “Come on, I’m parked over this way.” 

-

“Wow. So this is what California has to offer,” Oikawa says as he stands in the living room of Hajime's overpriced, cramped, "open concept," apartment. 

“Shut up,” Hajime quips. And then says, “you can just set your things down near the bed. I’ve cleared some closet space for you if you want to unpack later. Also the bathroom to your right.” 

Deftly making his way to Hajime’s bed which is situated by the window, Oikawa surveys the apartment, sees traces of Hajime in every nook and cranny: books scattered on a low table, weights by the couch, papers and pens, pictures from high school decorate the walls. 

“I see your taste in decor hasn’t changed much,” Oikawa says, touching the leaf of one of the plants sitting on the window sill, taps the nose of the ceramic Godzilla planter that holds a little round cactus. 

Hajime just shrugs. It’s true and it’s not like he’s ashamed of his cluttered apartment, every corner filled with some sort of trinket to come back to at the end of the day. 

“Makes the place feel more like home, I guess.” 

Oikawa chuckles, “mm, but Iwa-chan, I think you’re missing one crucial part to your decor.” 

“And what would that be?” Hajime asks half-heartedly, having turned his attention to the contents of his refrigerator in the hopes of finding something he can cook up for dinner. 

“Well, obviously that would be _me_. Don’t tell me you’ve already gotten used to not having your best friend by your side.” 

Hajime pauses where he’s rummaging around in the vegetable drawer. 

In the beginning it was weird, like there was a piece of his life that went missing somewhere amidst the chaos of growing up. And even as the months passed, sometimes, if the weather was right, an acutely felt longing would strike at random, like his heart refused to let go of what was. 

But yes, he did get used to not having Oikawa around his person, because life doesn’t stop even if your friend of over a decade shows up at your house, when the dew is still fresh and the sun is barely peeking from the horizon, to say goodbye for the foreseeable future. 

Because life doesn’t stop, even if your childhood friend kisses you sweet in the morning dawn before disappearing into a cab. The shock of which kept Hajime from reacting, from tugging at the other’s wrist, begging him to stay. To take Hajime with him. 

He finds what he’s looking for. 

“Ya, by my side, bothering me when I’m trying to study, eating my food, keeping me at the gym hours after practice has officially ended.” He grabs a container of left-over rice, juggles that and an onion in one hand, broccoli, soy sauce, and an egg in the other. “I can make fried rice for dinner, come help me.” 

The two men crowd into the small kitchen with mix-matched appliances. Oikawa fills the silence with stories from Argentina and Hajime listens. 

They eat at the small table placed diagonally from the bed, feet easily finding shins, every touch bringing with it the air of a different time, a past time, when they were younger and they had to scoot down their chairs and stretch their bodies just to kick at the other in childish delight. 

Oikawa goes to bed early, Hajime sleeps on the couch claiming he doesn’t want to disturb the other man’s already precarious sleeping schedule. 

A half-truth. 

**Tuesday**

The reintroduction of Oikawa into Hajime’s life is easy in the practical sense. 

It’s summer vacation for teachers and kids but Hajime’s a college student, the metaphorical teenage years of the human condition, falling awkwardly between the kids who still have time to dream and the adults who are too tired to. He’s an intern with the Sports Medicine Center, a partnering clinic to the University. Three times a week, Monday through Wednesday, nine-to-five, he’s in the office. 

Hajime wakes up a little before eight and sits in the comfortable silence of the morning, looks towards the bed and sees a nest of brown hair smothered in a pillow—half convinces himself that he’s still in Japan, that he’s still in high school—he gets up and makes a pot of coffee. 

So while Oikawa is still dead to the world, Hajime sets to following his normal routine except today he makes a second plate of breakfast, plastic-wrapped and set on the counter. 

He leaves extra coffee in the pot, an empty mug waiting for its intended user to wake up. 

A spare key on the table. 

Practical changes, easy changes. 

His time in the office is like any other day. He clocks in and counts inventory, orders supplies and shadows practitioners. He writes preliminary reports on new patients and plugs others into heart rate monitors. He stretches legs and arms, wrists and ankles. He almost forgets about Oikawa in his apartment.

But then Hajime comes home from work to Oikawa tutting around the kitchen, standing over a boiling pot, and every feeling, hope, wish he’s cultivated in himself about his friend comes rushing forward in startling clarity. 

The very sight of Oikawa hunched over the table or stretched out on the couch has him recalling the earliest of memories and then recoiling over the fact that his friend is no longer a memory, a dream, but is a handful of steps away from him, living and breathing in the same space has him.

These changes are difficult, more tender than Hajime had anticipated. 

“I’m back. What are you making?” 

“I’m not really sure.”

**Wednesday**

After he gets off work Hajime offers to bring Oikawa to the campus gym. 

“I play when I have the time, sometimes with players on the men’s team, but nothing serious. I’ve lost my edge since graduating high school.” 

“Ya, so have I,” Oikawa quips back. 

And Hajime shoves him through the doors and flashes his student ID to the front desk personnel with all the gentleness of a car crash. 

“You’re such an asshole, Shittykawa.” 

They make their way to the locker rooms. Oikawa’s white knee brace stands out like a beacon on his tan skin and Hajime feels like he’s back in high school again. 

On the court, they find a place near the wall to warm up. Hajime helps Oikawa stretch, takes extra care with his knee, using what he’s learned to gently coax the muscles and tendons to relax. 

“Oi, you’re on break. Don’t overdo it here. It’s not like you’re going to get scouted.”

“Aw, but Iwa, I wanted to show you how I’ve progressed,” Oikawa says, conjuring a whine in his voice. “And what if I do? What if the coach is hiding somewhere in the rafters and sees me rip your arms off with my serve? They could waltz right up to me and ask me to join the men’s team. How about that? Would you like that, Iwa? If we went to school together?” 

Hajime scowls, “stop being shitty Shittykawa and get in position.” 

Oikawa just hums and makes his way to the net, ball in hand. 

“Ready Iwa-chan?” 

And just like that, Hajime is dancing to the beat of Oikawa’s drum, hitting ball after ball with re-discovered fervor. 

They ask two other court occupants if they would join them for a game of doubles. 

They don’t tell their opponents that Oikawa’s a nationally ranked Argentine volleyball player nor do they tell them that he’s going easy on them. Or, as easy as his pride will allow him to play. 

Their opponents stay with them for two games, vacating the court when Oikawa serves his seventh ace of the match. 

“Thought you were gonna go easy on them,” Hajime says, uses his shirt to wipe the sweat from his brow. 

The other man shrugs, “that _was_ easy. You want to try?” 

“Sure.” 

They make it home when early evening sets in and the sun casts tired rays of light over the city. 

“Take a shower first, I’ll massage your knee after.” 

Oikawa feigns insult, says in that weird cadence of his that reveals the witticism behind his words, "Iwa, don’t tell me you plan to exploit my knee to further your practical knowledge in your field of study, have you no shame?" 

“As if,” Hajime says, flicking his friend on the forehead. “Now go take a shower, idiot.” 

And Oikawa does, scuddles into the bathroom whining something along the lines of, “mean Iwa, so mean.” 

Oikawa's still shower-warmed when Hajime kneads his thumbs around his knee, circling the bone, compressing the muscle with pressured strokes. 

“I’ve already made dinner, so eat when I’m done with this.”

He nods, asks, “what did you make?” 

Hajime squeezes at the ligaments on the underside of Oikawa’s knee, feels some tension—“grilled mackerel”—presses harder. 

“Mm." And after a pause, "you don’t have to do this you know,” Oikawa says. 

“I know that.” 

“Then why?” 

Haime’s hands don’t stop their ministrations but he frowns. He’s not sure how to answer.

It’s difficult to explain without Hajime sounding unhealthily obsessed with Tooru and the man’s existence in his life, but to him, Tooru is everything. 

Hajime was the only child growing up and as all only children can attest to, his world revolved around him and him alone. He wasn’t a mean child, nor was he outwardly selfish, but all of his parents’ love formed in him a bravado that needed an outlet.

And so it was a blessing that Hajime met Tooru on that hazy summer day when the sound of a moving truck signified to the arrival of the new neighbors. 

They were both five years old when they were introduced to each other, Tooru hiding behind his mom’s leg and Hajime proudly offering one of his bug-catching nets to the other boy. 

That summer, Hajime and Tooru discovered secret trails through woods, brandishing sticks like swords, and made kings and warriors of each other. Together they tromped through streams and fell in lakes; they would come home exhausted and damp and their parents would shuffle around them talking fast about bugs and dirt but Hajime and Tooru would just laugh at the twigs in each other's hair. Together they were explorers who braved vast lands only to come back stronger.

Slowly his world expanded to include Tooru; together they ruled the court.

Now at twenty-three years old, brave and selfless Hajime had no idea how to coherently explain what this friendship grew in him—can’t wrap his mind around these emotions that have him missing Tooru to the extent of selfishness. 

“I don’t know.” 

Hajime’s hands leave their place at Oikawa’s knee, and another pair of hands take their place. 

Oikawa traces around and around his knee, almost as if he were trying to coax an answer from where Hajime had touched. 

“Do you love me, Hajime?” 

He asks this in a voice that makes Hajime feel two years younger, standing alone at his front door. He has to resist the urge to touch Oikawa again. 

His fingers twitch, answering what he can’t—won’t.

When he exits the bathroom Oikawa is curled in the blankets of his bed.

Hajime eats dinner alone. 

**Thursday**

“Hey, get up. You can sleep in the car.” 

The drive to San Diego from Irvine is short enough to do in a day but long enough that, if you want to spend a decent amount of time there, it's best to leave early. 

So Hajime wakes Oikawa up a little before nine and shuffles his half-sleeping form into the car and speeds off south, keeping the coast to their right. 

It’s about twenty minutes after their departure that Oikawa finally wakes up enough to realize that he isn’t in the comfort of Hajime’s bed. 

“Where are you taking me?” He asks, Sleep still evident in his voice, raspy and whispered as if anything louder would shatter the glass of Hajime’s windshield. 

“Are you finally tired of me? Gonna abandon at some gas station?” 

Hajime rolls his eyes at his friend’s presumptions, says, “you’re ridiculous. And you’ll see when we get there.” 

Oikawa pouts, “I didn’t even bring anything, what do you mean _when we get there_?” 

“I packed you a bag, it’s in the backseat. Your phone is in there too, now chill for a while. We should arrive around eleven.” 

The rest of the ride goes by in quiet reverence as the radio floods the dashboard with love songs made for the youth who still hope. 

Oikawa has relented his initial confusion and anxieties for intently looking out the window, following the sharp cliffs that melt into the blue waters below.

“Do you think if you were to jump from there, you’d die?” 

The question half startles Hajime, evident in the crack of his voice when answering.

“Probably not. You might just get seriously injured. Why?” 

Oikawa hums. 

“You thinking of jumping?” Hajime asks when Oikawa doesn’t respond.

“Would you jump too?” The other man asks, keeping his forehead pressed to the window. “Would you answer the question every disappointed parent asks their kid when they get tangled up in the wrong crowd and gets caught doing something stupid?” 

Hajime doesn’t take his eyes off the road, eases the brakes when a car cuts in front of him.

“Yes.” 

-

They order lunch from a seaside cafe and eat their sandwiches on the beach. It’s a little early for lunch but neither of them has had breakfast, so they split a fruit cup and take sips from each other's drinks. 

“You could have just told me you were driving to San Diego,” Oikawa says as he brushes sand from his hands. 

Hajime shrugs, “it’s more fun to confuse you,” says before Oikawa can whine, “plus, I wanted to surprise you.” 

Oikawa blushes golden in the sun.

Together they follow the shore and poke around in tide pools. Oikawa spots a sea urchin and doesn’t pass up the chance to compare the creature to Hajime’s hair. 

They explore shallow sea caves, calves getting wet from the tide, and above they hear the guttural bark of sea lions, leathery skin and broad flippers slapping sharp and on the rock's surface. 

They walk across beach-wood slippery with algae and dig around for crabs. 

“Iwa-chan, take a picture of me standing on that rock!"

The boulder Oikawa bounds up to is the size of a small car and wet from crashing waves. 

Hajime sighs but doesn’t stop him—centers Oikawa on the screen of his phone, takes in the vast blue that threatens to drown his person, the size of the rock beneath him further shrinks his stature and makes him look insignificant. 

“Don’t fall getting down, dumbass!” He calls to his friend, now sitting where he stood, contemplating how to get down. 

He walks closer to the side of the boulder and peers up. 

Oikawa’s head eclipses the sun which makes a halo of light around his windblown-mess of hair. 

The camera shutter rings clear in the air. 

Oikawa smiles down at where Hajime is standing, says, “are you ready?” 

And before he can even question what the other man is asking about, Hajime is stepping forward with his arms stretched out in desperate urgency.

There’s a synchronized “oof,” as bodies crash into each other, a splash as they hit the water, the cold soaking through layers of fabric.

Oikawa laughs and Hajime yells. 

“You could’ve gotten seriously hurt, dumbass! What were you even thinking?” 

One of Hajime’s arms is tightly wrapped around the other man’s waist while the other arm is connected to the hand that’s attempting to squeeze the gleeful smile off his face. 

“I was thinking,” Oikawa says, detaching himself and standing up from where the surf soaks his pants, grabs his phone from the sand where Hajime deftly chucked it to land before rushing to catch him, “that you’d be there.” 

-

They eat dinner where they ate lunch, on the sand, listening to the crash of the waves as the sun descends below the horizon and makes it look almost as if the celestial body itself is disturbing the ocean, displacing the water like an awaiting bathtub filled to the brim, spilling water onto the tile shores.

“Are you going to drive back tonight?” 

Oikawa asks this as he uses his foot to bury one of Hajime’s in sand.

“Ya. Unless you want to stay, we could probably find an open motel for the night.” 

He watches as the mound of sand peaks, creating a tiny pyramid atop of his foot. 

“No. Let’s go home. I prefer your bed.” 

The pyramid crumbles. 

**Friday**

Bathed in sunlight and drowning in linen sheets, dust motes dance above them and except for the rise and fall of their chests, breathing even and slow as the world wakes around them, they’re the only things that dare to move in the early morning light.

Hajime wakes up first, careful not to disturb the man next to him. 

Two plates of breakfast. 

Extra coffee. 

Oikawa joins him at the table wearing the sheet from the bed like a cape, dragging the pillows halfway across the room. 

The day is spent doing nothing. The inconsequential, soft kind of nothing that still leaves you content at the end of the day. The kind of nothing that makes washing dishes feel special. 

Together they do that kind of nothing—

Oikawa tries to teach him Spanish.

“Repeat after me. _Oikawa es muy lindo_ ,” he says, enunciating the vowels, his soft mouth rounding and stretching to the sounds.

And Hajime does, red-faced as Oikawa cackles over how the words fall clunky from his lips.

“Shut up, Shittykawa.” 

But the other man smiles, says something quick in the foreign language that’s made a home under his tongue; he doesn’t have Hajime repeat it. 

Hajime trims Oikawa’s hair. 

“If you make me ugly, I’ll never forgive you.” 

“Don’t worry, you’re already ugly.” 

Oikawa pouts, feigns insult, and Hajime wonders what it means to love someone.

They fall asleep sprawled out on the same bed, legs over arms over stomachs. 

—nothing nothing nothing and everything. 

**Saturday**

Hajime has seen this scene before, has lived it. He remembers the motions of departure, the unsure hands, the shallow breaths. Remembers the man standing in front of him, telling him something, something that Hajime really should do but is too much of a coward to do so. 

"Visit me in Argentina sometime." 

And Hajime's brain catches up with him. Oikawa's leaving California. Him. There's a car waiting outside of his apartment complex with the coordinates to LAX displayed on the GPS. There’s a plane waiting on sun-hot tarmac that will fly him across the ocean and away from California. Him. Oikawa’s leaving. Him. Again. 

Leaving him again. 

"Ok." 

The door clicks shut.

He’s standing alone in his apartment and there’s a lump in his throat. The one from two years ago. The one that visits him in the quiet hours of the morning. It’s annoying. Its presence is annoying and Hajime wants it to leave, wants to stop feeling this way, doesn’t know how he got this way in the first place. 

Alone in his apartment, he doesn’t want to turn away from the door and look and see his empty kitchen—empty bed—because turning will make it real. 

“Fuck it," he nearly rips the door off its hinges as he bolts down the hall and stumbles down the stairs.

Hajime is tired of this adult cowardice, wants to be brave again like he was back in the woods when consequences didn't matter and they could fall into ponds and roll down hills unafraid of broken bones and broken hearts. 

The sun blinds him as he burst through the door and into the dry California heat. 

_Tooru, Tooru, please still be here,_ he thinks. 

To his left he sees a mess of brown hair lowering itself into the passenger's seat of a car.

“Tooru!” 

-

Tooru hears his name as the cool AC hits his face and turns to see his friend of more than a decade, his love of more than a decade, running towards the car. He almost wants to laugh at Iwaizumi’s face, eyebrows knocked and mouth a frown; he wants to smooth those lines, soothe those lines that make him look old.

Getting out of the car with a quick apology to the driver, he turns to face the oncoming man but before he can get his question out his knee buckles from the sudden impact of Iwaizumi tackling him, crashing their lips together.

Tooru's hands cling to Iwaizumi's chest for support and he feels an arm tighten around his waist, a strong hand gripping his side; he lets his own hands slide up to cup Iwaizumi’s jaw. 

Iwaizumi pulls back and Tooru chases his mouth, not wanting this to end, kisses the corner of Iwaizumi’s mouth, hears him whisper—

"Yes. I love you." 

**Sunday**

He stands staring at the metal carousel of luggage hoping that he read the notice sign correctly. The books Oikawa lent him were helpful, but Hajime continues to struggle with conjugations and after a thirteen-hour flight, nothing makes sense anymore. 

Just as he’s about to walk off and re-read the sign that tells him where his luggage should be, a strong arm drapes itself around his shoulder and a honeyed-voice says to him, “estás desorientado, lindo?” 

Hajime frowns, “huh?” 

Oikawa laughs, “come on Iwa-chan, did you even read the books I gave you?” 

“Shut up, I'm tired. Help me find my suitcase.” 

“Ok, ok," Oikawa says laughing. "But I want a kiss first.” 

And Hajime relents, kisses him sweet and tender until he feels light-headed. 

He blames it on the altitude change. 

**Author's Note:**

> Hi, I hope you enjoyed reading this. I was in a little bit of a writing slump so I'm really proud of myself for finishing this. I took inspiration from the quote in the top notes; if you haven't, check out the full poem. Also, I attempted to use some Spanish because the idea of Oikawa speaking Spanish is *chef kiss*,,but I also forgot all the rules of conjugation I learned back in high school—I also understand that Latin American Spanish and Argentina have their own distinct differences and dialects from those who speak the language Spain, so I did do some research, however, I can't promise that the phrases are 100% perfect so I welcome any and all advice that native speakers/more knowledgable readers may provide me. 
> 
> As always, comments, kudos, and constructive criticism are greatly appreciated!
> 
> Also, here's my [Twitter](https://twitter.com/welpplew) if you want to cry over haikyuu!! with me


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